Have wood, will travel … Wood will make you warm several times over … ML
PS, Tally has bitched at me about having to fill sacks …
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Very well put Mr Wayne I feel the same way
Hope you got your hayin done we didn’t have much to dry and i guess you guys had just the reverse
have a good day
Tom
The Suburban has segued into a big block crew cab 4x4 dually. The first decent one I can trade my Taylor guitar for. Which should be pretty decent. And, I’m going deaf, anyway. Now, I need to snag a couple of those Harbor freight half off coupons, for the welding helmets. And, we’re looking for the tractor, too. One of our prospective welders is away attending his cousin’s OD funeral. He’s fourteen. We hope this will be another good lesson for him. If his home schooling tutor is any good, he’ll soon be our secretary/treasurer. If he’s not good, we’ll just twist the kid’s arm. We are ourselves not far from joining the sick and shut-in. Before then, we hope we’ll be Klamath hay producers, and haulers. Running over passes in every direction. We are believers in the free lunch. We’ve watched our ex wives. But, we’ll still just make our own. This is already getting to be good sport, And lots of new merit badges. This is so economically driven, that the wood gas truck is assigned to the motor pool. While we learn hay. For starters, it’d be nice to get to the yard sales that support this party, a little cheaper. So, by my math, we are about one in 5 and a half million.
Ha! Ha!
Instead of for the tenth time responding to woodgas cleaning by electrostatic precipitation (works - an energy/tech expense hog)
and an oil bath air cleaner for woodgas inquiry (works too - can get very snot slimy nasty 100% humidity woodgas clogged quick!)
thought I’d just bump this topic and other thoughts back up to the top for general inquiry reading.
Woodgas - ONLY doing/using is learning. And only loaded IC engine woodgas fueling is learning well.
Steve Unruh
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O.K. We need to make a movie, “Why we drive.”
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Hi all. I am reviving this to show that even though in the past 3 years with all of the new system built and up running these use numbers haven’t changed.
When I first wrote this road gasoline here was $4.00 a gallon. Now is $2.00 a gallon here.
Not all bad news. Much advancement now on actual “other” EFI engine systems used. Improvements in durability. Improvements in engine/gasifier heats recycling allowing for lower woodfuel consumption and the use of wetter fuelwoods.
Still . . . the real hold back for wider use is the fuel wood Sourcing/Prepping side of it.
Think of the fellows who’ve build a system. Operated it. Now no longer operate it.
Once they discover that with an at least 4 to 1 ratio between woodfuel power and a refined dino fuel in Weight . . . . AND a 10 to 1 ratio in storage space woodfuel power versus refined dino fuel that Dino Will Always Be Easier. Dino fuels money makers work very hard to price tank-out, and lobbing regulate out any other energy competitions.
North American winter heating season is here. There be at least 11,000,000 million who still bulk wood heat for their homes, shops and barns in North America.
So 1 in 300 still getting a significant amount of their yearly energy here in NA from woodpower.
I just finished wood-sweating in the last of 7 cords/924 cubic feet of air dried Doug Fir for our two houses woodstoves.
Looking back at the last 7 years I see the most relevant factor to whether a person will join the one in a million who woodgas for usable engine power isn’t their skill as a welder fabricator,
their ability to do the maths,
follow along the thermal-chemical process
It really is predictable by their ability to Source, then Process, and then Maintain a wood fuel pile that will diminish at, at least a 200 pounds a day used-up rate.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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As always Steve, a spot-on perspective. In my case I have done exactly as you say. Since selling my previous wood-gas candidate vehicle, I have not sought another one, but rather, have concentrated on the equipment and tools necessary to process wood to support that habit. Hand saws, chain saws, wood handling and splitting tools, a “rebak” style chunker, charcoal production, a fuel-grading trommel, etc. etc.
We also heat with wood exclusively, albeit on a far smaller scale than some, since we only have about a month or two when temperatures might get below freezing. I have not driven a single mile on wood, and may never, but I want to lay the necessary groundwork to support it if I ever do. It’s a much more achievable goal for me at this point, and will have value for many things other than driving.
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Yup! Just got in from throwing another cord of stacked firewood inside. It’s 4 PM and already starting to get dark. I don’t like it.
When outside in the cold I glanced at my filled up chunk storages, knowing that I’ll brobably not be able to do any more gasifier welding until spring. I don’t like it.
Our gas prices are 3 times yours but still the cheapest in a long time.
Was talking to my dad the other day. We came to the conclusion that an avarege worker’s salary pays for twice as much gasoline now compared to 1970. At that time almost everyone went for sunday trips in their dino cars while their dino burners heated their homes. Dino was considered cheap and Sweden was the richest country in the world.
Half the price today and it’s expensive? Everyone talkes about how they can’t afford anything. What has happened?
Might have something to do with all the extra gizmos we think we can’t live without.
Written on my gizmo pad
JO
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Smack on Steve. I’m one of the lucky ones, a 15 minute side trip on the way to work this AM, netted 300-400 lbs of kiln dried hickory in blue barrels, most of it cut to size. 
It’ there every week, usually more. Wood-life is good.
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Some folks think of ways to acquire their wood and some folks have to think of ways to dispose of their wood 
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I have a reasonable priced saw mill looking too dispose of his wood at about 3.5’ long a stack about 4.5’ tall and about 30’ long stack, for 50 bucks,i just need too catch it when he has pine wood so i can save a bundle or two out back for while too dry then just saw and load in gasifier.Thanks
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Just get your country to start bullying the middle east and then you can have cheap gas prices too! War is back and it is in style!
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more and more people are heating with wood these days since outdoor woodburners are plug and play or should I say fill and play… A lot of wood that was once free is now being sold. People have gotten stingy around here.
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Not to mention the fact that our government takes our tax money and gives it to our oil companies to make the pump price appear cheaper.
The worst part of all this oil price games is all the murders takeing place under false pretence of wars or intentional body bags. all the big wigs getting together in secret decideing who dies next, you caint desire 90 percent of the people gone and inslave the rest, as the elite have spoken, without being demon crazy bunch of satanist.
I don´t think middle east has anything to do with our gas prices. 2/3 are fixed taxes. That way we always have expensive gas whether oilprices are high or low - and I like it - I don´t drive a lot
I´ll start driving a lot as soon as my gasifier is up and running (when ever that will be 
)
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I think our gas taxes average around 40 cents a gallon in USA, at least that’s what they tell us anyway.I liked it better when there was more competitors on fuel sales.Sunday drives been on a steep decline in the USA allso in the last 10 years. Good luck with gasifier time, its hard to to make time for projects it seems for many of us.I may be one in a hundred by the time mine is finished.
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Kevin; $50 for that size bundle sounds very high to me, but as usual, the price is what ever the market will bare. With gas down to $2+ a gallon $50 of gas will take you a long way with NO effort. Makes it hard for us to justify our woodgas vehicles.
JO; I hate taxes and I usually feel the government is just trying to rake us over the coals. But in Europe, I do feel that maybe they are taxing you for your own benefit. If it wasn’t for that tax, you would be guzzling down gas like we do in the US. Your economy would get use to it and then, because you don’t have your own oil supply, that economy would tank very hard the next time your oil supply is cut off. And yes, with your oil coming out of the middle east— at some point it will get cut off. Find time to get welding on that gasifier. You will always have a good reason to run on woodgas. Why can’t you weld this winter? TomC
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Hi Tom C,The row i explained above,fills my big truck bed too the top,and a 5 by 10 foot trailer 3.5 foot side racks twice for 50 bucks,at least a federal cord i would say.Because it is heavy,then again most the time its plain old cotton wood witch should work if cut to optimum size, then wait 3 to ? months after cut too dry out, or let set out back too dry for 8 months ,then have tons of wood for 150 bucks.
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Hey KevinR I have both woodstoved and gasified with cotton wood a bit. Works. Is a dried down low density, lower enrgy by volumn fuel wood with a higher end ash %. Once dried - Keep it under cover and dry. Soaks up water like a spong, then rots quick. Still sap wet burnt it will smell like cat piss.
Guys we can debate top-down controls of energy sources endlessly. And I would put forward that once you allow anything to be commodolized then subject to “futures” speculation that that is now the most significant price swings driving factor. E.G. the California deregulation of grid power then allowing speculators like “the crooked E”, Enron to steal billions never can be got back with western grid market manipulations.
But in the end all you really can control is you and your little corner of the world that touches you.
In our Consumer societies we can do this very personal, and directly.
My pancakes and french toast get real regional cows butter, real NA maple syrup or local bees honey. Made with our own deep rich bugs and grasses fed chicken eggs.
Nope. Ain’t enough cows butter for everybody. They hook, line and sinker mostly use “healthy for you?” vegetable oil margarine.
Nope Ain’t enough real maple syrup for All either. They hook, line and sinker use corn syrups artificially flavored. Mrs Butterworths should be listed as addictive. Yum. Yum.
Ain’t enough 100% nectar local honey for All either. They price seduced by China watered down imports.
Ha! Ha! Very funny to me when I get called elitist for insisting on the the best like these, and woodheat.
Yes JO I can afflord these because I cheap Internet, actually mechanically wear out my electronics, drive our must get good good mileage vehicles out into their recycling age, live in a 50’s lifestyle house not back to the future “connectivity” converted. Buy, and wearout PNW wools. USA 100% cottons. Dino synthetics NOT good around woodstoves!!
Only thing that has really effected me is when the “trends” makes what I do use and consume impossible to source at any sacrifice price.
Been through two gasoline rationing era’s in my lifetime. And many grid-down power outages.
So I insist on the freedom to make my own for these no availability times.
Wood-for-Power in any way getting tougher and tougher here socially labeling me as a “TreeKiller” or a Pee-loot-er. These progressive socials all vote and end up driving me even more to the energy bootlegging, then by their new laws illegal approaches. I am now locked out on driving on wood. Challenge the OBDII beast a few thousand time and sooner or later he bites back hard.
I am not elitist at all. Neither, am I an energy-for-all missionary.
Just like our home grown eggs and chickens has at times a sweaty, shitty, blood guts and feathers personal price: woodpower demands a personal woodsweat commitment outgo too.
History shows well now repeated time after time: late 1940’s, early 1980’s then the whole 1990’s that only those willing to personally pay the woodsweat price repeatedly, annually, will not allow themselves to be bought-off and put wood-for-power into real ongoing use.
And this is that one in a million guy or gal.
Yep. I now judge “woodgassers” by the size of their woodpiles. All else is talk/squawking with no sustainable real use results.
As some have come to know me through personal contacts that I’m actually more woodenergy insistent than this. IF you are not willing to invest in actually growing your wood enrgy to balance your consumption you should stick with dino energies, grid energies along with margarine, corn syrups, and eggs and chicken meats from the store shelves. ( means more available for those who want and are willing to sweat sacrifice for the Real values)
I do try to moderate down my living beliefs to more internet group social though.
Regards to all
Steve Unruh
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